When an apparently normal, healthy boy grows into a vicious serial killer, who is ultimately responsible? Can such a monster exist without some blame being laid at the door of the people who gave birth to him and raised him? Can such a human aberration arise unless the seeds of his evil reside in the very being of his parent? These are the questions Lionel Dahmer confronts as he realizes, with growing horror, that his son Jeffrey has brutally murdered and even cannibalized young men over a period of years.

A chemist, Lionel is by nature analytical. He wants to know why this awful thing has happened, and he won’t spare himself in his search for the truth. So we are taken on a journey through his memories and his merciless self-reflection. Could he have done anything different that might have prevented so much senseless murder? Did his divorce from Jeffrey’s mother play a part? Was Jeffrey’s fate transmitted with Lionel’s genes? There seems to be no clear answer, and he wants nothing so much as clarity, some kind of certainty.

Raising Jeffrey Dahmer is about love in the midst of chaos as Lionel and his second wife—Jeffrey’s stepmother—try to cope with the rumors, innuendo and intrusive media attention that descend on them when word of Jeffrey’s crimes reaches the public. It’s about the love of a father for a son who is incapable of returning that love. And it’s about a parent who does his best but is haunted by the suspicion that his best simply hasn’t been good enough.

In Lionel Dahmer, we come to know a man who speaks for all parents everywhere as they try to grasp why their children are who they are and what role parents really play in shaping them. Raising Jeffrey Dahmer is based on the events that lead Lionel to question the origins of evil and his own complicity in its creation and consequences. Don’t we all, as parents, look at the failings of our children and see their seeds in our own past?

Lionel Dahmer is the extremity of a parent’s dilemma, but from his terrible experience he learns the power of love and hope. In a story we all need to hear, he shows us that we—and society at large— are too quick to condemn parents for the choices their children make. But Lionel’s personal tragedy also becomes a triumph of the human spirit—a spirit that allows each generation to believe in a better future for its children.